Even if the Republican Tax Bill (RTB) lowered the tax on all people there is no doubt the big beneficiary were the rich. Not only was the estate tax exemption doubled to up to 11 million dollars, the top rate on income was lowered from 39.6 to 37%. A guy earning 50 thousand may pay 3,000 less while a guy earning two million in taxable income saves $52,000, which is more than the $50,000 a year earner earns.
Why is it then that the Republicans are so interested in making the rich richer? And when I’m discussing this I’m not including all the other “pass through” tricks in the tax bill where people who earn money from passive real estate investments (Trump source of income) , passive meaning they have nothing to do with the management of the investment other than to take money from its earnings, have to pay taxes at a 21% rate on that income even if they are in the 37% tax bracket for people earning more than $500,000 a year. That’s the same rate as a person earning 40,000 a year.
I don’t suppose anyone will suggest the RTB did not enormously benefit the wealthy. Nor do I suppose, if the intent was to help the middle class that it was impossible to create a tax bill that helped them but did not help the rich and ultra-rich. Can we agree then that the Republican Party is the party of the rich?
Now I’m sure you’ve all heard the term “double taxation.” It is defined by Investopedia as: “referring to income taxes paid twice on the same source of earned income. It can occur when income is taxed at both the corporate level and personal level.” The argument was that the corporation has to pay tax on its income so when it passed on to its owners in the form of dividends the same money on which the taxes were already paid is being taxed again.
That really is a silly argument since corporations are considered as separate entities. It is taxed (although now under the RTB at a much lower rate again helping the rich) and the money it pays out is taxed. That happens all the time. If your income is taxed and you pay out part of what you earn to the plumber who just fixed your frozen pipes he also is taxed on the money you earned which has already been taxed.
Now though, because of the RTB, we are really going to see cases of income being taxed twice. At one time in America what an individual received was only taxed once unless the individual entered into a situation where he voluntarily agreed to be taxed again on the money he was already taxed on such as buying something subject to a sales tax or a home subject to a real estate tax. One situation where one did not voluntarily agree was to state income taxes. There, you would have clearly been taxed twice on the same income without your consent.
This true double taxation to one person on his income, federal and state, was avoided by allowing the person to deduct the money he paid on state taxes prior to the time he was assessed his federal taxes. If he made 200,000 and paid state taxes of 12,000 he would only be taxed on the 188,000. In an extraordinary additional benefit the federal government also allowed a tax voluntarily incurred, the real estate tax, to be also deducted.
Prior to the RTB a person owning real estate on which he paid 15,000 taxes and his state tax of 12,000 would be able to deduct the total 27,000; now he can only deduct the first 10,000. So there is a clear situation of double taxation on the same income. Does it matter that it is different entities the taxes are being paid to? Since one can be prosecuted for the same crime by both the federal and state government I suppose one can’t complain about having to pay double taxation to both governments.
But the bigger question remains, as you can see from the above, the persons most affected by the new limitation on the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted are the rich. How then is the party of the rich allowing that to happen? Is it a blue vs red question? I’ll give my answer soon.
and to think I campaigned for Barry Golwater handing out
fliers at Park Street Station in the 60’s
ugh!
in other newes….
How much evidence do you need that FBI agents were behind the Garland Texas shootings?
Really?
https://luxoraleader.com/fbi-doj-argue-for-dismissal-of-garland-texas-liability-case/441052/
FBI, DOJ Argue for Dismissal of Garland, Texas Liability Case
January 15, 2018 Staff Writer
The FBI and the Department of Justice are arguing that a liability case against the agencies should be dismissed,
The liability case involves security guard Bruce Joiner, who was shot in the leg in a 2015 terrorist attack in Garland, Texas. In that attack, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi drove to Garland’s Curtis Culwell Center in a car that was loaded with six guns and more than a thousand ammunition rounds, The Free Beacon reported.
The men opened fire at a perimeter checkpoint. Joiner was injured and Simpson and Soofi were killed. Joiner’s suit said the FBI is partially responsible for his injuries, saying the FBI “solicited, encouraged, directed and aided” ISIS in the attack, the Free Beacon’s report said.
Court filings in the case show that an undercover FBI agent “dressed in Middle Eastern attire” was in a car behind the shooters when they opened fire, The Free Beacon noted.
MLK Day
“the FBI agents spit on MLK’s body when he was brought to the
hospital after being shot.
He was still alive. But that didn’t matter.
The FBI agents proceeded to smother him to death with a hospital pillow.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-plot-to-kill-martin-luther-king-survived-shooting-was-murdered-in-hospital-an-interview-with-william-pepper/5544005
The Plot to Kill Martin Luther King: Survived Shooting, Was Murdered in Hospital | Global Research – Centre for Research on …
Global Research
Dec 26, 2017 · Thanks to the nearly four-decade investigation by human rights lawyer William Pepper, it is now clear once and f
Wa-llahi! I don’t believe Glorious leader said anything like “shit hole countries.” What he really said was “the United States shouldn’t accept any more mud people from the nigger nations.” I understand “nigger nations,” that’s plain enough, but, I’m confused by the reference to “mud people. “Tad could you help out? What’s the President mean?
more psychological sedimentation
from the leader of the mtc irregulars
in other newes….
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/01/15/you-dont-need-telescope-find-shithole-country
Monday, January 15, 2018
You Don’t Need a Telescope to Find a ‘Shithole Country’
This shithole country, which saw the world in black and white, communist and capitalist, was determined to thwart the aspirations of the poor and the landless in El Salvador.
byChris Hedges
Wa-llahi! Check out Lucian Truscott’s opinion of Trump in today’s Salon.
Scratch the paint on a liberal, and, you’ll find a fascist underneath. The petit-bourgeoisie, always, betray the Revolution. It’s their property fetish that makes them roll, the belief that a man cannot be a whole being without the acquisition of property (alienation). Equality is the last thing the petit-bourgeoisie want.
Socialism promotes the greatest good for the greatest number. Isn’t that the logical purpose of true democracy?
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with poking fun, drawing historical analogies or even resorting to the occassional epithet. Ideas can infuriate us. Wasn’t it Justice Holmes who said, “Every idea is an incitement” calling us to endorse or oppose explicitly or implicitly or inherently by spontaneous knee-jerk gut-feel reaction, and Holmes argued just because an idea “incites” folks to act, is no reason to suppress it under our First
Amendment . . .of course, he, Brandeis et al recognized the limits: “You could criminalize, prohibit, punish such verbal outrages (incitements) as “an immediate call to harm someone” ex. punch him in the face, Joe, or such inherently dangerous speech as “falsely crying “Fire! in a crowded theater” because to do either very likely could cause immediate physical harm (bloody nose, cracked orbital bone, concussion, death) or in the latter instance, death by a panicked mob trampling people running toward fire exit doors, as happened in the Coconut Grove Fire.
The point is keep speech free . . . ditch this liberal notion of banning hate speech or speech that offends . . . and if you want to write cogently in debate attack your opponents’ ideas not his person . . .but of course feel free to wallow in the muck and mire or modern day journalism . . .if that’s your penchant . . . .
remember, the saying of the shallow hippies of my day, “If it feels good, do it.” . . . today such a not too dissimilar nostrum from young and old liberals goes like this: “If it may offend anyone, stifle it.” Both sheer idiocies!
For heaven’s sake, they’re walking around on pins and needles trying to say something like, “Like, . . .like . . .like . . . .
In other words, as we learned long ago at Boston Latin
School and B. C. High School, when you begin to resort to ad hominem attacks, it generally means you are losing or have already lost the argument.
Generally, liberals feel superior, that is, they think and feel that conservatives are morally inferior and intellectually inferior to them; conservatives merely think that liberals’ ideas are wrong – – –
That’s why liberals generally like to call conservatives bad names . . . and conservatives generally like to expound ideas.
Hilarious.
a liberal is someone who walks out of
the room when a argument turns into a fight
a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged
in other newes
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/scolding-defense-judge-upholds-15m-verdict-against-lakewood-police-in-killing-of-unarmed-black-man/
“Insulting’: Judge blisters defense for race allegations, upholds $15M verdict against Lakewood in killing of unarmed black man
Originally published January 12, 2018 at 6:00 am Updated January 12, 2018 at 6:34 am
U.S. District Judge Barbara Rorthstein said there was ample evidence for the jury to conclude officers acted outrageously, unreasonably and with malice and callous indifference to the life of Leonard Thomas.
A federal judge has upheld a $15.1 million jury verdict against the city of Lakewood in Pierce County, Police Chief Mike Zaro and two other Lakewood officers for killing Leonard Thomas during a 2013 SWAT operation, taking the opportunity to scold the defense for suggesting the jury was motivated by fear of racial backlash if it exonerated the officers for killing an unarmed black man.
In a blistering 69-page order published Thursday, U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein rejected a string of post-trial motions by Lakewood, Zaro and two other officers — Sgt. Brian Markert and Officer Mike Wiley — asking her to either reduce or set aside the verdicts, grant the officers immunity from liability or order a new trial.
Instead, Rothstein swept aside the defense’s stubborn rejection of the verdict and insistence in the face of all evidence that the unarmed Thomas, a 30-year-old father who was having an emotional crisis, posed a threat to police or his 4-year-old son when he was shot by Markert, a SWAT sniper, after a four-hour standoff at Thomas’ home in Fife.
Rothstein found there was ample evidence for the jury to have concluded that Zaro and the others acted outrageously, unreasonably and with malice and callous indifference to the life of Thomas, or the impact their actions would have on his young son and parents.
.
Thomas’ mother, Annalesa Thomas, said she’s grateful: “I am speechless and in tears and thankful beyond words,” she wrote in an email. “Leonard’s justice prevailed.”
Instead of trying to help Thomas, the judge wrote, every step police took that night made it more likely he would die.
But Rothstein reserved her sharpest comments to chastise the city’s lawyers for repeatedly implying that the case — and the jury’s verdict — was influenced by race.
In pleadings and during a Dec. 5 hearing, attorneys from the Seattle firm Keating Bucklin and McCormack — hired to represent the city — argued that community sentiment about police use of excessive force against African Americans improperly influenced the verdict.
At the hearing, attorney Richard Jolley told the court that “what the jury found here is that they weren’t going to go back to their individual communities and tell the people that they associate with, we found in favor of white cops that shot an unarmed black man.”
Rothstein took judicial umbrage at those remarks and the defense contention.
“Without any evidence — without any factual foundation whatsoever — defendants have chosen to malign one of this country’s most sacred civic institutions, the impartially selected petit jury,” she said.
“The suggestion that this jury flouted its charge and colluded to hold government officials liable merely to advance the jurors’ individual reputations is not simply frivolous; it is insulting to our constitutional order,” she wrote.
“And the notion that the American justice system can be characterized by an illegitimate solicitude for black victims of alleged police misconduct is so painfully ahistorical that one wonders whether Defendants advance this argument seriously,” she said.
She found the argument particularly vexing, she said, since it was the defense that successfully persuaded her to preclude showing prospective jurors a video about unconscious bias, that they helped pick and approved the jury, and “notwithstanding the fact, should it even matter, that none of the jurors were African American.”
In addition to $8.6 million in compensatory damages, the jury imposed $6.5 million in punitive damages: $3 million against Zaro, who was in command that night and who gave the orders that led to the shooting; $2 million against Markert, the sniper who shot Thomas in the stomach with a precision high-powered rifle; and $1.5 million against Wiley, who led an assault team that blew down the back door of Thomas’ house and killed the family dog, Baxter.
The city has argued that those damages would amount to a “financial death sentence” for the officers, since they are not covered by the city’s insurance.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/crime/da-krasner-on-lack-of-charges-in-police-shootings-this-aint-fair-this-is-a-bias-20180112.html
DA Krasner on lack of charges in police shootings: ‘This ain’t fair, this is a bias’
Updated: JANUARY 12, 2018 — 1:03 PM EST
Reinforcing a position he took as a candidate, new Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner on Thursday night signaled his skepticism over the lack of prosecutions against city police for shooting suspects — and said his office won’t be shy about ending the near two-decade trend.
Addressing a roomful of lawyers, judges and community activists, Krasner noted that Philadelphia police have been involved in 50 fatal shootings just since 2010 – and every single one was deemed justified and unworthy of charges by the city prosecutor’s office.
“Look, we came here to tell the truth, let’s tell the truth,” Krasner, nearing the end of his first full week in office, said during a panel discussion on police shootings at the Free Library. “This ain’t fair, this is a bias.”
Congress enacts statutes, and BREAKING NEWS, they can enact new statutes which modify, amend or nullify existing statutes.
who told you what Congress enacts is Permanent? time mag or the nyt?
Give the workers, rich, middle class, poor more of their own money to spend and invest, and give less and less to Big Government . . .the minumum necessary to maintain essential services . . .that’s what I a staunch conservative support and it’s what MIlton Friedman supported, too.
You see liberals and conservatives think differently and draw different conclusions.
“Can we agree then that the Republican Party is the party of the rich?” Hell’s bells – NO! Just look at the overwhelming donations to the Democrat nominee in the last election. Both parties represent the rich, the GOP considerably less so.
Those who pay the most taxes must by necessity in absolute terms benefit more by a reduction in tax rates. There is no way around it. But in terms of proportionality, the President’s tax bill benefits the lower and middle class most. High school math can explain that to anyone who passed the course.
As for the deduction for state and local taxes, it has long been a subsidy to profligate states, counties, cities and towns. This abuse has been curtailed. As for the double taxation argument on this one can point out that these different entities are akin to various products in a store. If you buy a loaf of bread you are not doubles charged when the storekeeper expects you to pay for the quart of milk too. There is no reason a swimming pool for students in a posh suburban town in a high income state should be subsidized by a rural area trying to scrap up a few bucks to pay for a drainage ditch to keep roads open that are vital for school buses.
For decades big city Congressmen have tilted the tax code to the advantage of big cities and their greedy public sector unions. The new bill has in part redressed this injustice. Chalk it up to: Elections have consequences.
Aside, has anyone noticed that Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown of Taxifornia has sent out a feeler that unsustainable public pensions may have to be trimmed back a bit towards where the rest of the economy grants them?
The new tax bill is a small step towards rationalizing the system. It is still full of loopholes. It is neither fair nor rational. But it is an improvement. Congress should start looking at taxes as a way to raise revenue and nothing else. As it stands it is a Rube Goldberg contraption that functions as a dysfunctional Five or Ten Year Plan similar to what used to screw up the economy of the defunct USSR. Kind of wish Trump was in this area more like Putin and less like his colleagues of both parties in Congress.
You will say anything to defend Trump won’t you?
“Those who pay the most taxes must by necessity in absolute terms benefit more by a reduction in tax rates. There is no way around it. But in terms of proportionality, the President’s tax bill benefits the lower and middle class most. High school math can explain that to anyone who passed the course.”
They could have looked at various provisions which benefit the middle class tax brackets and leave the top brackets alone. It doesn’t have to be done by necessity. For example, they could have lowered the tax brackets on middle income earners and left the highest tax bracket at 39.6% and left the current corporate tax rates in place.
EVEN IF YOUR PROPORTIONALITY ARGUMENT IS CORRECT…the tax cuts to income earners are not permanent, in theory folks could see their taxes INCREASE in 10 yrs when the cuts expire…but the Corporate tax cuts are permanent. That fact alone shows you who the RTB is really for.
Tadzio…are you a 1%er? If not, why do you argue so fervently in favor of those who throw you crumbs to distract you from those who are making out like bandits?
“By necessity” was meant in the sense of mathematics.
The ten year sunset feature is intended to force a review of taxes at that time under intense pressure from the middle class to create further tax cuts. In politics ten years is meaningless. It is several eternities. The pressure has to come from voters at that time, not the big Democrat leaning, high income donors. As a matter of practical politics the cuts will have to be extended and/or improved. The idea is to force political action for a better system in ten years.
“Corporate tax cuts are permanent.” Nothing in tax law or politics is permanent, Kiddo. “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session,” has been often noted.
In response to your last query: Why are you so consumed with envy? It is not conducive to a healthy spirit and has clearly retarded your intellectual development.